Month: May 2009

Richard Dawkins’ selfish gene is what I mainly based my e-book. The other is red queen by Matt Ridley.

The idea is that the gene it self is selfish and persuade their host, namely us, to proliferate the genes. Effectively all human traits and preference can be explained as those that maximize their offspring.

Hence humans “love” themselves, their immediate family, those who are “similar” to them, those who are useful to them, and so on.

The red queen says that what matters is not how fast we run, but how far you run relative to everyone else. So monogamy is just stalemate. Enforced stalemate actually. Something that’s not natural if we understand Richard’s theory.

I am very technically minded.

It explains why democratic countries often have monogamy norms and monarchy has polygamy norms. Marriage is socially “approved” relationship and hence tend to ration sex partners in proportion to power. In free sex, the attractive is the one had it running. In marriage the “powerful” gets better deal (relative to free sex). In monarch, the powerful king get more babes. In democracy, the mob want to ration females in equal share for everyone and have their way.

Of course if the “powerful” have their way everyone will aim for power and that means we’ll kill each other. Power is almost a zero sum game. The more the “state” and whoever control it have, the less power you have for your self. Some power is unavoidable, hence why everything else is worst than even the lawsy democracy.

In fact, women’s consent matters much less than we think. If women is free to choose, they all pick the alpha males and the rest go extinct. No countries are that “free.” Key to winning is to go below everyone else radar. Hence various illicit sexual relationship we have. Prostitution is illegal, but escort is legal. We can have our way as long as we don’t challenge societies prejudice that “No women are willing to do it for money.” The truth is most women will and that’s why prostitution is illegal.

The nash equlibrium is another thing from game theory. It’s a state where everyone maximize their profit when everyone else is maximizing them. There are many nash equilibriums. It explains why we walk in the left while you walk in the right even though our genes are 98% similar. It explains why you are democracy while Iran is not (hint, both are Nash equilibrium).

It explains why believes are self fullfiling. If everyone else do A, my best response is B, so I do B, after that I hope everyone else are indeed doing A because if they don’t, B will not be a good deal anymore. It explains why machiavelli suggest not changing the rules once you conquer a country. It explains why Christianity’ norms simply reflect the culture where it spreads. It explains advantage of doing what everyone else expect you to do.

When people steal my stuff, everyone else expect me to move on. That’s nash equlibrium. Doing otherwise will pissed of a lot of people that are used to tolerate thieves. However if all of us hit back, people will get used to the fact that thieves “had it coming”. Soon, even when someone kill thieves, societies will tolerate that because it’s what they expect. People hate surprise.